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Firefox Flicks winners announced

It's open source commercials for an open source browser. Check out the best …

Mozilla has announced the winners of its Firefox Flicks advertising contest. Initiated after the release of Firefox 1.5, the contest gave Firefox users the opportunity to create their own advertisements for the open source web browser. The 30-second ads have been published for public viewing at the Firefox Flicks web site. The press release provides links to the top three videos and two honorable mentions. The winners were chosen by a panel of celebrity judges, which included screenplay writers, actors, and marketing experts.

Although most of the winning advertisements definitely look like amateur productions, several of them are extremely amusing and well written. The winning submission, entitled Daredevil, compares Firefox use with the speed and exhilaration of extreme sports, and features the slogan "My other browser is a surfboard." The second place entry, called Whee!, includes various browser logos making obnoxious sounds. Fox Fever, which took third, is a parody of television shows that feature unusual animals in exotic locations. My favorite submission, called This is Hot, uses excellent computer animation to depict Eskimos that encounter Firefox for the first time. Pete Macomber, director of the first prize submission, comments on the value of the contest:

"The coolest thing about the Firefox Flicks contest is that everyone wins," Macomber said. "Aspiring directors showcased their skills before a wide audience, inspired by a revolutionary organization, and now Mozilla has more than 250 sweet spots for Firefox."

Unfortunately, the Firefox Flicks web site only makes the videos available in a proprietary format that can't easily be viewed on the open source Linux platform. I was able to view the videos by downloading them manually and playing them with Xine, but some Linux users haven't been able to play them all. Maybe next time the folks at Firefox Flicks will use an open format like OGG Theora.

Despite the poorly selected video format, I think that the Firefox Flicks competition has been very successful so far. The competition has generated a great deal of positive public exposure and media interest, and hopefully it will compel some users to ditch their browsers in favor of Firefox. As Firefox market share continues to steadily climb, web designers will have a stronger incentive to provide better multibrowser support. With the IE7 release around the corner, and critical Firefox 2.0 features being delayed until future releases, Firefox will need all the help it can get.